The Hundred Reigns

Chapter 166: The Sanctuary in the Sky (15)

Nodens’ crystal shuddered in anticipation inside its coffin of glass.

The open device rested in a cathedral whose basement was filled with enough explosives to blast one of Marthrone’s districts to smithereens. Alchemical bombs, bottled fire, and even detonating fruits from the Sanctuary’s most inhospitable islands had all been gathered in one place, and Simon had rearranged the Forbidden Keep’s layout to maximize the blast’s destruction and ensure the building would collapse on Nodens, should it fail to take him out.

Simon was alone in the room, his eyes darting to the exit hole in the ceiling he had dug to escape should Nodens somehow negate his teleportation inside his own Dungeon. Music boxes were also ready to start playing and debuff the demon’s magic before he could do anything.

Everything looks to be in order, Simon thought as he reviewed his Inventory one last time. Besides dozens of magical accessories meant to let him cover all of his bases and golems ready to deploy when appropriate, he had also stored his telescope and the Scream of the Soul grimoire; the first in the hopes he could continue observing the comet should they win today’s battle, and the second in case it somehow interacted with the reigns due to its mysterious, miasma-based nature. I wish I could have spent more time developing better lenses than bombs…

The comet’s arrival had finally allowed Simon to observe it more closely and start studying the Overlord crestone schematics… to a point. Besides the fact that the arcane script was nightmarishly complex, it also stretched out over a massive object that Simon could only see one side of. It would take multiple reigns or use of the Lighthouse’s stronger telescope to completely study it.

“Everyone is in position, Your Majesty,” one of his branded demons informed him through telepathy. The handful of those he hadn’t purged already were either aboard the Ravenous or the Freedom Bird to coordinate with his allies. “Lord Anaximander informs us that the comet will enter the Goatfish’s constellation in roughly fifteen minutes.”

Simon tensed up as he put on his Overlord armor and began to cast his longer-lasting buffs and put on his Strength for Speed ring. All of this year of preparation had led to this moment.

The die was cast.

“I hear you cast, Deceiver.”

The sudden telepathic contact sent a jolt down Simon’s spine. He had grown so used to hearing Nodens singing his heart out that he missed his sudden silence. The trapped archfiend finally deigned to acknowledge his existence.

“Are you quite finished?” the demon asked as darkness pulsated from his crystal. “Are you done weaving more webs and schemes to entrap me again?”

“I am not Mardok,” Simon replied, though he knew he was wasting his words. “Mardok is dead.”

“Are you lying to me, or to yourself?” Nodens let out a noise akin to a dismissive scoff. “No matter. I sense Abraxas approaching to bathe me in its baleful glow. The curtain is about to rise on the stage.”

“Your comeback tour is cancelled,” Simon said as he smashed the glass coffin and grabbed onto the crystal with his hand. He had already tried to devour it earlier, but his Title and Perk wouldn’t work while the comet had yet to shine on the Goatfish constellation. “We won’t let you cast these islands down onto the earth below.”

Nodens remained silent a moment, and then came the laughter; a vicious melody of scornful mockery and cruel delight.

“Oh, Mardok…” The demon’s voice oozed with bottomless malice. “I’ve had four hundred years to think of how to top that performance.”

And then it happened.

Simon sensed the exact moment when the stars finally aligned and Abraxas entered the Goatfish’s constellation. The shift occurred like a pulse, a slight tilt of an invisible balance, a change in the constant tides of miasma that the comet bombarded the world’s surface with. Nodens’ crystal suddenly became the nexus of all the worlds’ evils.

But Simon had stared into the Abyss itself, and found it wanting.

“Devour Crestone!” he shouted, his words triggering a cacophony of music box songs lessening the miasma’s potency. He clutched the crystal and attempted to consume it, to fulfill his Devourer Title’s condition without giving Nodens time to fully incarnate.

Black lightning crackled from Simon’s hand, and pulses of energy coursed throughout the room. The spiritual weight of his Dungeon pressed against Nodens’ power, like water trying to douse a flame too hot to be quenched. Simon heard wails of pain in the back of his mind, alongside screams of tortured souls and the gnashing of teeth, while the metallic tang of blood and the stench of warm entrails filled his nostrils. He gave his all in this clash of wills as he tried to subsume Nodens.

His best wasn’t enough.

A mighty shockwave threw Simon back across the cathedral, the music boxes burning out and fuming all at once. A sound of shattering glass echoed across the air, followed by a dash of pain coursing through Simon’s chest.

Your Dungeon has been destroyed.

Simon rose back up to find the zodiac crystal floating in the air by its own volition, free to ravage the world once more.

“You have miscalculated, brother.”

The colossal amounts of miasma pouring out of it took the shape of a monstrous shadow whose upper part resembled a goat and the lower one that of a fish. Two malevolent eyes, the very same which had glared at him in Cocagne when merged with Casval, now stared at him with glee.

“The comet is so close I can feel the strength of the stars surging inside of me!” The shadow raised his arms. “I am more powerful than I have ever been!”

The teal-colored Goatfish crystal radiated an unholy glow that deepened the shadows in the room, until they grew so thick they appeared to become solid. They wove themselves alongside the ever-growing cloud of miasma as it began to fill the room, causing the outlines of sinew and bones to materialize. The stench of blood and the sheer aura of menace radiating from the darkness became overwhelming as it threatened to engulf the entire cathedral.

“Elemental Imbalance: Frost!” Simon cast on the reforming demon, before immediately activating Darkflight and fleeing through the hole in the ceiling before a half-formed clawed hand the size of a cart could grab him. That should give him a weakness to fire, and thus all the explosives in the cathedral.

“I’ve failed!” Simon telepathically informed his allies through his bound demons. “Bomb the place!”

He emerged from the cathedral a split second before the Freedom Bird began to shell it.

To ensure Lady Junon could participate in the fight, they had moved the Forbidden Keep’s island right above the much larger Boreas’ lake region. Vayan and the flying Champions had formed a perimeter around it alongside Alcyone’s airship and Voltobauta’s Ravenous. They danced around the island and bombarded it from all sides under a pitch black sky dominated by the dark comet.

It didn’t take long for the manalith cannon strikes to detonate the bombs under the cathedral, setting off a chain of explosions that annihilated the Dungeon. A cataclysmic blast sent the clock tower’s top flying off alongside tons of stones and debris. Entire chunks of the castle collapsed into the water below, never to rise again.

Simon watched the spectacle from above after quickly summoning his dracozombie to carry him upward. He moved above Voltobauta’s ship, on whose deck Belzemine, Anaximander, and landbound eidolons like Carbuncle and Culebre had gathered. All of them were waiting for the signal to open up with a new bombardment.

The Ravenous and Freedom Bird briefly ceased firing as the smoke diminished their visibility. However, while Simon couldn’t see much past the impenetrable clouds, the sheer miasma in the air had put his Dark Visionary senses on edge.

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“Nodens isn’t dead!” Simon warned his allies through his bound demons spread across the battlefield. “Mages, second wa–”

Evil engulfed the Sanctuary in an instant.

A wave of reddish miasma erupted from the Forbidden Keep’s ruins, blowing away the smoke and hitting Simon like a tidal wave. He felt it blow over him like warm air filled with the nauseating stench of bloodied steel before carrying forward across Boreas. The entire island shuddered in its wake. Lady Junon’s network of roots wadded out of the earth like wounded snakes wriggling in pain.

The pulse spread across the entire Sanctuary, and shattered the sky.

There was no other way to describe it. The heavens grew red like blood and streaked with fine lines like broken glass. A weight Simon had grown accustomed to over the past year was lifted off his shoulders in a blink, much to his shock and surprise.

Nodens had destroyed the barrier keeping the Sanctuary hidden from the world.

Barrier shattered by Nodens, the Painbr–

The notification glitched out all of a sudden, Nodens’ title changing into one written in blood.

Nodens, the Flayer of Worlds, has engulfed you in his Abyssal Domain.

Nodens’ attacks will pierce through all elemental resistances. Anyone taking a wound will suffer both a permanent Bleed and Anti-Heal effect.

Hell awaits you.

A primeval horror arose from the Forbidden Keep’s rubble, great and terrible.

The vile monster that emerged to challenge the Sanctuary was a true vision of Hell, a beast as gigantic as Vouivre had been when empowered by the Beast Crestone. It took the shape of a mangled parody of a goatfish, at least in its outline. The upper part belonged to an anthropomorphized, skinless goat wrapped in two immense wings composed of thousands of sharp metal knives. The monster’s naked flesh and veins leaked blood by the gallons, while an apparatus of bindings and spiked chains kept his arms bound to his chest. His head, however, was the ghastliest part of all, a skeletal scalp atop a ghastly, lipless grin. A crown of spikes burst out of the back of its head, and the Goatfish crystal glowed malevolently between bloodshot eyes.

The bottom half and tail, meanwhile, resembled an armless, mummified giant’s corpse bound in bloodsoaked straps. A lipless mouth full of fangs was the only part of the face left exposed, gnawing its teeth like a wild animal. It flailed around as Nodens slithered out of the Dungeon’s ruins to glare at the army gathering to fight him with giddy anticipation. His mere presence oozed fear and malice, and though he carried burns from the explosion, his wounds seemed frighteningly light for a detonation of such magnitude.

Dreadmaster negated by Indomitable Crown.

He’s huge, Simon thought, his heart beating in his chest. While Waybright described the archfiend as taking this form during their final fight, he was never that gigantic. Abraxas’ greater proximity had allowed him to achieve new heights of power. At least he’s a bigger target now.

The mere sight of the abomination caused some of the Champions to start breaking ranks as the aura of terror briefly overtook their mind, and Simon could hardly blame them. Thankfully, Eole’s voice blasted out of the Freedom Bird’s loudspeakers like it did in the previous reign and filled the warriors’ hearts with courage.

“Mages, fire!” Simon ordered his allies as he began to spellcast himself. “Gigatox!”

A rain of spells targeted Nodens from all sides. Belzemine, Anaximander, Voltobauta, Ruto, and every spellcaster present unleashed their most potent sorceries, from fireballs capable of blasting apart castle walls to bits to floating ghostly skulls and beams of solid moonlight. Simon himself rained down poison and had his dracozombie join in with its wretched breath.

“How kind of you, brother,” Nodens said with a wicked grin, his voice brimming with gleeful cruelty, “To bring me an audience!”

The mummified mouth on the tip of his tail let out a soul-rending noise.

The droning note coming out of the tail wormed its way into Simon’s brain and set it ablaze, filling him with a wave of nausea and unsettling anguish. A vivid hallucination of Bert’s iron maiden closing on him briefly flared in his mind before being repelled by his Perks.

Terror and Madness negated by Indomitable Crown!

The rest of the army didn’t have such luck.

The wail turned into a baleful song of haunting, strident notes that drowned out even Eole’s voice. Many Champions screamed in pain and horror, their minds assaulted by whatever visions Simon’s Perks spared him from; they held their heads with their hands, either flailing in place or losing control of their flight and falling to the ground. Only a handful of people like Tybalt or those close enough to the speakers to still hear Eole’s voice avoided that fate.

Nodens let out a wicked laugh and quickly unfolded his giant wings, literally waving away most of the weaker magical projectiles thrown at him. Simon’s Gigatox, Anaximander’s beam, and Voltobauta’s ectoplasmic burst all managed to hit their target, but only Belzemine’s potent fireball elicited a true grunt of pain as it struck the giant in the chest and burned his flesh. Nodens quickly took flight with agility that belied his immense size, the flaps of his wings throwing thousands of knife-like blades at everyone. The projectiles struck dozens of targets, cutting wings or tearing Voltobauta’s ghosts to shreds. Every slash, no matter how light, caused an immediate hemorrhage due to the Abyssal Domain’s effect.

Vayan, who had waited for this exact moment as part of their battle plan, lunged at the archfiend faster than the wind. The eidolon cloaked himself in a current of air and charged with his talons out.

Other Champions were supposed to join in and help pin the archfiend down, but the tail’s song had disoriented most of them. Only Tybalt, Zeal, and her racker—whom Simon had equipped with a Darkflight ring for mobility—followed the Sky-Father into melee. They tackled and struck, with Vayan lacerating Nodens’ chest while his allies sliced and lashed at his neck.

The plan had been to force Nodens to the ground and into melee where he was at his weakest, and it would have worked had he been at the assumed size. However, the Flayer of Worlds’ current shape meant the assault was akin to a large cat and mice trying to pounce on a lion. Nodens’ spiked chains suddenly sprang to life like snakes and lashed out at his attackers, forcing Tybalt and Zeal back while whipping Vayan off him.

Meanwhile, Nodens’ horrible melody continued to rise in intensity. The screams of its victims echoed with it and joined into a dreadful chorus. It was a sad fact of ailments that no equipment or preparations could cover them all, but Waybright’s information never mentioned an insanity song as part of the demon’s repertoire.

“The minds of mortal creatures are such fragile and sensitive machines,” Nodens informed Simon through their telepathic communication. “Mystical stimulation of their brain can stimulate so many emotions: fear, despair, anguish…” The archfiend’s grin somehow widened even further. “Pain.”

It’s the same song, Simon realized. Nodens was now intoning the same melody he had been rehearsing for months. “You were practicing.”

“Imagine the worst pain you have ever felt, distilled into your very soul,” Nodens taunted Simon as he tossed Vayan off his back and then got off the Forbidden Keep’s island. “Imagine seeing things so awful, you would rather claw out your eyes rather than keep watching, or feeling your skin being peeled away from beneath, until insanity becomes your last refuge.”

Realizing he had to act now, Simon had his dracozombie dive towards the maddened Champions and began to sing a tune of his own. “When silence offers no respite, death’s trumpets shall herald your end! Sing my praise, Culebre Chainpiper!”

His Dark Eidolon materialized at his side in a blast of miasma with a thunderous cacophony.

“In the end, the pain will grow so terrible that listeners will kill themselves to escape it. This stage will carry my song to the winds, so all may partake in this fatal performance!” Nodens’ malicious laugh echoed as his chains extended to strike at Simon. “I will shepherd this entire world to suicide!”

“In your dreams!” Simon snarled back as he deftly dodged a chain lunging at him. “Culebre!”

The dark eidolon’s trumpet unleashed a cacophony so loud that it drowned out Nodens’ melody. Culebre’s song of control overtook the screaming kishs’ and harpies’ minds, replacing their pain with the mercy of silent obedience.

“It seems audiences prefer my song to yours,” Simon taunted him. “Culebre, gather all the kish and harpies you can and have them follow the plan!”

An enraged Nodens hissed and began to incant a spell, but neither Voltobauta’s undead nor the Freedom Bird’s crew were thankfully affected by his baleful song. The Ravenous harpooned Nodens by the tail like a whale and forcefully pulled him back, while Alcyone’s airship fired another volley of manalith cannon blasts. Nodens was forced to protect himself with his wings.

“Closer to the ground!” Voltobauta ordered his troops as the Ravenous pulled a struggling Nodens towards the forests near the lake, which would allow Lady Junon to join in. “Pull that whale to the shore!”

Leaving his eidolon to shepherd and rally the victims, Simon flew closer to the Ravenous and cast Putrefy on Nodens’ tail. Belzemine, Anaximander, and Voltobauta also joined in, pelting the singing mouth with projectiles in an attempt to silence it.

The mummified tail’s bandages suddenly unwrapped like tentacles. Some moved in front of the spells’ trajectory to intercept them, while others struck the deck at immense speed. Voltobauta, Belzemine, and a few other spellcasters managed to dodge, but some were less lucky than others. Anaximander, in particular, was struck in the shoulder.

The bandage ripped off his skin like a cloak.

There was no other way to describe the horrific scene. The bandage touched Anaximander’s shoulder and unfurled his skin off his body, pulling it out and leaving his naked flesh exposed. The elf screamed in agony as the domain’s magic caused him to bleed from everywhere at once. Everyone else struck by the bandages suffered the same fate, drowning the deck under gallons of blood.

“Anaximander!” Simon shouted in horror, his eyes burning with fury as Belzemine rushed to try and save the victims from death. “You’ll pay for that!”

The fires of Hell poured out of his eyes in a torrent of malice, striking the tip of the tail with such intensity he incinerated the bandages around its singing mouth. The flames of his fury unveiled a rotting, eyeless head of stitched flesh; all the while, colossal and thorny roots arose from the ground below to coil and crush around Nodens’ tail. The song came to an end, but something far more unsettling than screams or wails replaced it.

The mouth instead moaned in pleasure.

“Did you forget, brother? I like the pain.” Nodens’ eyes shone with power as he completed his incantation. “Burning Abyss!”

He uttered a word of power, and a sea of flames engulfed the world at his command.